Blues are first online with YouTube deal

Friday 16 February 2007 21.13 EST
First published on Friday 16 February 2007 21.13 EST

Chelsea have struck a deal to show archive footage and club news on the online video-sharing website YouTube, the first such deal to be done by a Premiership football club. The deal will allow content from the club's subscription channel, Chelsea TV, to appear in a branded area of the website, www.youtube.com/chelseafc. The site will feature daily news updates, archive footage of Chelsea games and other features, including jokes from the Chelsea physio, Billy McCulloch, although restrictions in the Premier League's broadcast contract means live footage will not be shown. Content is produced by Chelsea Digital Media, a joint venture subsidiary owned by Chelsea and Sky.

The Chelsea chief executive, Peter Kenyon, said: "We are delighted to work with YouTube. Chelsea is the first football club to move into what is clearly one of the fastest growing new media platforms. This will allow us to offer our fans exciting Chelsea FC content in a very unique way, as well as an opportunity to reach a whole new audience."

The deal comes as YouTube, recently purchased by Google for $1.65bn, moves to legitimise its content. The site's success was built on home-made video contributions and bootlegged clips posted by users - more than 100,000 are uploaded every day - but increasingly broadcasters and rights holders have sought to have content removed. Football is a huge driver of traffic to the site, with millions of clips and goals available. The Premier League has been in talks with YouTube over removing their content from the site, and the entertainment company Viacom recently demanded that YouTube remove 100,000 clips from the site.

Chelsea's move, however, acknowledges that some bootlegging is inevitable, so it is more useful to attempt to control the content that appears on the site.